Wednesday, 9 December 2009

I'm for Nigel Lawson and flatter taxes, says Cameron (to bankers)

Why isn't Dave a banker? The Times reports his City in my blood pride at his banking heritage:

David Cameron attempted the balancing act yesterday of wooing the world’s most powerful bankers while assuring Middle England that he would not give that most hated profession too easy a time.

Speaking to a gathering of top financiers, the Conservative leader told them: “My father was a stockbroker, my grandfather was a stockbroker, my great-grandfather was a stockbroker.” The City, he assured them, was in his blood. Those present, who included Bob Diamond, president of Barclays, and Richard Gnodde, the co-chief executive of Goldman Sachs in London, purred their approval.

The Times report suggests it was an exercise in characteristic Cameron ambiguity, and not one which did much to answer the same newspaper's challenge yesterday - "David Cameron has yet to answer a basic question: what does he stand for?"

The taxation system should not, in normal times, discriminate against people, including bankers, Mr Cameron said, briefly raising hope among the assembled plutocrats that the levy could be seen off. “But these are not normal times,” he went on. “Taxpayers feel genuinely outraged about the level of bonuses being paid.”

Perhaps more significantly in the long-term, there is an intriguing endorsement of the idea of flatter (ie less progressive) taxes and - with this audience at least - he has identified his guru not as Polly Toynbee but as Nigel Lawson.

he added, he was in favour of flatter taxes. “I’m a Lawsonian, basically,” he said, Under Nigel Lawson’s Chancellorship, income tax was cut and other taxes were simplified, but some indirect taxes went up.